A Christian Scientist charged with manslaughter for not seeking medical help for his son's fatal ailment testified in Boston that he had believed prayer was helping the boy. Prosecutor John Kiernan cross-examined David Twitchell, 34, in an effort to uncover inconsistencies in prior testimony about the severity of the five-day illness of Twitchell's son Robyn, who died four years ago at 2 1/2 of a bowel obstruction. Twitchell's wife, Ginger, 34, has also been charged.

A woman whose child died of meningitis while a Christian Science practitioner was treating the girl with prayer has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Laurie Walker, whose 4-year-old daughter, Shauntay, died in 1984, was placed on probation and sentenced to up to 600 hours of community service by Superior Court Judge George Nicholson.

A judge Friday placed a Christian Science couple on 10 years' probation for denying medical care to their dying son and ordered periodic medical examinations for their other children. The couple, convicted of manslaughter in their son's death, said they would comply with the order. "We always tried to obey the law . . . and we'll try to obey the judge's instructions," David Twitchell said after he and his wife, Ginger, were sentenced by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Sandra Hamlin.

A panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals has been asked to decide whether Christian Science parents can face criminal penalties if their children die after receiving only spiritual healing treatment for serious illness. The panel heard arguments July 11 in St. Paul on an appeal by Hennepin County of an April ruling by Hennepin County Judge Eugene Farrell that dismissed second-degree manslaughter charges against a Christian Science couple in the death of Ian Douglass Lundman.

In an unusual move, the Justice Department is telling Congress it no longer will defend in court a federal law that allows Medicare and Medicaid payments to Christian Science care-givers. A federal judge in Minnesota ruled in August that such payments, allowed since the mid-1960s, violate the constitutional separation of church and state. In a letter to the Senate legal counsel, Atty. Gen.

Scanning the Cal State Fullerton gymnastics room is like looking through the window of a medical supply store. Two girls are wearing bulky knee braces. One wears an elbow brace. Several knees are heavily taped, and almost every ankle is taped. In the center of it all, working out on the beam, is Titan junior Stacey Harris, who wears no braces, no tape, nothing that would give her body a little extra support during practice. Not that she couldn't use it.

In 1974 when Richard Nixon fired Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox the American public was so infuriated that Congress was bombarded by millions calling for impeachment. The same citizens, war-weary and tired of being lied to, pressured Congress to cut off the funds and the Vietnam fiasco came to an end. What has happened in the 1980s is that the American people have lost their sense of outrage.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge Wednesday approved the settlement of a legal dispute involving Christian Science literature in which about $23.5 million will be awarded to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. According to terms of the agreement, officials of the Boston-based First Church of Christ, Science; LACMA and Stanford University will divide the contested bequests of about $100 million from the families of Bliss Knapp and his wife, Eloise Mabury Knapp.

James Andrew Wantland, 12, was suffering from diabetes, but he was treated with prayers, not insulin, according to his mother. The La Habra boy died last year. Now the Orange County district attorney's office is considering criminal charges against the boy's father, grandmother and other members of the Church of Christ, Scientist in Orange County.

Newspapers by nature are the kind of thing people take personally. Just ask any editor about the irate phone calls that pour in after each decision to drop a comic strip. Now imagine if someone makes sweeping changes in a newspaper that is literally a religious mission, changes that provoke a debate about the very foundation of the religion.